Who cares about fresh? Calorie free is good enough for the coffee cart
Wishing you luck with that. My brother has fallen deep into the rabbit hole. The signs were there and I missed them. I thought he was just being an ornery contrarian when he talked viciously about JT because I wasn't aware of the larger movement at first. I knew he always embraced nonconformity too, like distrust of medicine (except when he needed open heart surgery) and a seeming penchant for quackery. All harmless in isolation, but as a whole, it's like he's been replaced by an alien. All hidden in plain sight. First clue I got was a message inviting me to look at Pat King's videos. I thought he was more "intelligent" (he usually is and I have admired his views in the past). Lost a couple of old friends too. I got dismayed every time someone mentioned what "they" were doing. Sigh. I expect it's pointless to try to change their mind.
I'm surrounded by people who are into conspiracy theories but they don't call them that. My husband has always tended that way, and I see evidence of it in my three kids. (This doesn't help right now when husband is dealing with cancer because he doesn't trust the doctors). All are not as far out as Pat King (from my home town, sigh) but they talk viciously and hatefully about political leaders, and talk about the monied 'they' as controlling certain things. I, too, have changed my way of thinking about leadership, and feel somewhat left out of the grand scheme of who does well and who doesn't. But, if I haven't stepped up to provide better leadership, my options are respectful protest, and support for anyone who is providing the leadership I think we need. Recently, I filled out a political survey and it is the first time I really gave them my cranky opinion. I said that they were wording the questionnaire in a way to make me think ill of certain parties and certain decisions: the survey was trying to sway my opinion AND it was asking questions that could only misdirect. I'm tired of the media, and the information gatherers trying to influence me. The scripture reading this week was about Mary at Jesus feet, listening without distraction. That's what I'm trying to do right now...not be distracted by political pundits, or experts if they are leading away from my core values.
Yeah...Maybe he's emboldened and supported to just be more transparent about what he always believed? There needs to be a dsm category for weaponized, comfortably-off, embittered white people too.
Let's just not forget that unhappy people feeling disenfranchised have brought more than few authoritarian regimes to power. Even Hitler played on that kind of feeling in the Weimar Republic.
What's concerning too is that tent is really big. Evangelicals, bikers, alternative health practitioners, gun advocates, white supremists and ordinary chumps just swept along in the current. Who doesn't want "freedom"? There really doesn't seem to be a particular unified cause. The people I know have always (I thought) been against right wing politics (maybe not my bro). One of those friends announced to me she was voting People's Party last election because they were the only ones promising body autonomy and "freedom". Before that, she wouldn't have dreamt of it, or advocated any of those policies.
I don't think these people are disenfranchised. But they feel disenfranchised, though, and how they feel probably matters more than the reality of their situation. They have jobs. They have healthcare. But they feel that the social progress made by us "woke" people is somehow taking away from their lives. Same-sex marriage devalues their marriage. Women doing their job devalues their work. Transpeople confuse them and seem to change the definitions that they have lived by. None of this is true, IMHO, but it's how they perceive reality. They want a white, male, Christian world where men are men and women are women and men marry women. Anything else should go back in the closet and stay there.
